


fragility in waves

by searwrites (sears)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Grief, M/M, Minor Character Death(s), Sad, all the depressing tags im sorry, blind!armin, hints towards erwin/levi, mentions blood/gore, wounded!armin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:25:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1373842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sears/pseuds/searwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>future fic where armin is blinded and jean becomes commander - originally posted <a href="http://searwrites.tumblr.com/post/77866397627/fragility-in-waves">here</a> </p>
<p>---------</p>
<p>Most tragedies come and go in the blink of an eye - the things that affect us most are the ones you pay the least attention to at the time. Jean wouldn’t even say that dying is something to be feared anymore, only pain.</p>
<p>Death becomes a sigh in the wind, a force of nature. It’s living that was always the most difficult thing to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fragility in waves

Most tragedies come and go in the blink of an eye - the things that affect us most are the ones you pay the least attention to at the time. Jean wouldn’t even say that dying is something to be feared anymore, only pain.

Death becomes a sigh in the wind, a force of nature. It’s  _living_  that was always the most difficult thing to do.

Armin was stuck in the infirmary, his small whimpering voice covered by a cacophony of screaming terrors. Jean’s entire body shook out of fear, out of guilt. Guilt because it was on  _his_ horse that Armin was wounded.

The titan had loomed over them from behind, covered them in shadow and crept up as if it were a house cat and not a 15 meter class monster. It unhinged its jaw, and Jean whipped around and sliced its tongue straight from its mouth. Armin simply turned his head around to see it, and was immediately slapped across the eyes by a boiling streak of blood.

Jean still isn’t sure what was worse- the sound of it searing Armin’s flesh, or the way Armin’s voice had broken when he screamed.

Jean sat motionless in the outer portion of the tent and waited for what felt like days - a steadfast object placed in a room full of perpetual motion, people running, crying, shouting.

A nurse came out, and Jean could only barely hear her amongst the static.

_"…burned his retinas…"_

_"…will not be able to see…"_

It was days until Armin was released, and Jean had not moved but for absolute necessity. Armin was led out by the arm, a mangled stick in his hand. If Jean had been of the mind to pay more attention he would have noticed Armin didn’t know what to do with the thing, only let it drag against the ground.

Instead Jean looked at Armin’s face. At the white bandages wrapped thick around his eyes, encompassing his head. The hair at his temples was matted to his skin in dried blood - his  _own_ blood, Jean assumed.

Armin couldn’t see him. He only knew Jean was there when Jean spoke to him, recognized him by the sound of his voice, and even let out a quiet utterance of his name.

_"Jean?"_

He said it like Jean might not reply, like he couldn’t trust the world without seeing it for himself. Jean had replied “I’m here”, and when Armin smiled, wide and almost fearfully relieved, it felt almost as if he’d crushed something small and precious by the strength of his own hand.

  


-

  


Eren’s return to the camp was in a whirlwind storm of rage and worry. Someone must have told him, Jean figured, if the sound of his booming voice as he approached the tents was any indication.

He pushed through the front of Armin and Jean’s tent, without so much a nod in Jean’s direction. Mikasa was close at his heels, looking not unlike the tamer of a rabid beast. Jean had wanted to scream at Eren for startling Armin while he slept, especially when sleep was so hard to come by as of late, but Mikasa’s presence at his side kept him quiet.

Eren knelt down on Armin’s cot, eyes frantic as he held Armin’s delicate face in his hands.

"It’s me," he said desperately when Armin tried to pull away on instinct, "Armin, it’s me,  _stop it_ , Armin.”

Eren turned to look at Jean, his eyes wild in accusation.

"What did you do to him?" Eren yelled.

Jean only laughed to cover the burn of bile from the back of his throat.

"He’s blind," Jean said shortly, and then paced in on himself, tugged tiredly at his own hair when Eren only blinked at him. "Jesus, Eren, he can’t see. He’s  _blind_.”

"No," Eren said, turning back to Armin and pulling his face close. "No, no,  _no_.”

He started to cry then. Hideous, gut wrenching sobs, wailing like a wounded animal.

"Armin," Eren cried, shaking the bandaged face like it had done this to him on purpose, hurt him intentionally. "Armin, you can’t see me anymore. Armin, your  _books- Armin_ , how will you read? You can’t read anymore. What about the ocean, Armin? Your books,  _how will you read them to me_?”

It was the distorted and silent twist of Armin’s mouth, the way it opened and sobbed quietly in pain, that killed Jean the most. The way Eren was so blindly upsetting him - the way Jean wasn’t even sure Armin was capable of crying anymore, wasn’t sure if Armin even had eyes beneath the bandages left to cry  _with_.

He turned to Mikasa then, searched her face for anything other than its usual stern solitude. Jean lowered his voice as he spoke to her and said, “For fuck’s sake, can’t you get him to stop?”

Mikasa merely blinked, kept her gaze focused on the two crying boys.

Jean jerked forward on instinct, Eren’s broken sobs deafening to his ears. His intention was to move Eren away, to get him to leave Armin in peace, but Mikasa’s grip on his bicep pulled him back, the force of it strong enough to leave finger shaped bruises.

"Don’t you dare come between them right now," she warned quietly.

Jean yanked away from her and left the tent, choosing the solitude of the night sky over having to listen to Armin break again and again.

  


-

  


The battles had died down. The Survey Corps no longer was split from the seams. The weather seemed to reflect the mood on this day - the sky bright and hopeful, the air crisp and smelling new, less tainted by the stench of blood and torn flesh.

Armin and Eren sat beneath the shade of a tree out on the grassy hill. Armin rested his bandaged temple against Eren’s shoulder, while Eren scowled down at an open book in his lap like it had offended him.

Jean was at Commander Smith’s side, a map unfurled against the surface of one of the tables. The Commander had opted to do his work outdoors for a change, said the air inside was too stifling. Jean had thought it was something to do with Corporal Levi and his hidden smiles, content at being reunited with his Commander after all this time apart.

Armin should be here, Jean had thought at the time. He should have been stood right between Jean and Mikasa, should have been given the greatest view of the map in its entirety. Instead he sat broken beneath the shade of billowing leaves, and Jean couldn’t tear his eyes away.

He heard them talking. Eren was reading to Armin - or trying to, rather. Jean supposed there was always a reason that Armin was their storyteller, that he was the one with all the books. He’d never really considered that it was because Eren  _wasn’t able_  to.

"…was the height of de- the height of  _decour_ \- dec…”

Armin then traced the book with his fingers, touched the words with Eren guiding his wrist, and said, “Decorum.”

“ _Decorum_ ,” Eren repeated, and then continued to read.

It was as if Armin had felt the words. Perhaps he had, Jean wouldn’t know. He’s seldom ever touched the pages of a book.

Jean turned back to focus on the discussion at hand, to absorb Commander Smith’s thorough instruction, and to learn as well as adapt. The wind carries voices out in the open, though, so Jean found himself constantly being pulled back to them.

Mikasa caught him staring, glared at him as Jean frowned at another stuttering attempt at a sentence by Eren. They’d moved onto the pictures now, Eren was describing the colors of the mountains to Armin, with limited vocabulary.

"Can’t you read to him?" Jean asked Mikasa, no fear in being caught watching them.

"I have more important things to do," she muttered quietly, and Jean scowled at her before she had a chance to turn back to the table, "-and so do you."

  


-

  


Jean was barely past being a teenager when he began to feel the weight of the years he’d lived. None of them have lived lives appropriate for their age, that amount of death puts a toll on everyone.

Armin still wore his bandages. He would get them changed in the infirmary, would sneak out of their room alone at night to do it. Jean never asked him about it, never felt it was his place to know.

Even if Armin had asked for his presence, Jean isn’t sure he would’ve had the time to go. The war was drawing to a peak, a climax in sight, and Jean spent most of his waking hours with command.

"They’re getting you ready for it," Armin would say quietly, speaking to the ceiling in the dark, and Jean had no way of knowing whether or not he was asleep at the time. "You will be the new commander of the Survery Corps, mark my words."

Jean supposed if they were flipped, if it were Jean stuck in a cloud of black behind bandages, the words Armin said would’ve sounded far more bitter coming from his own mouth. The way Armin said them seemed almost  _proud_ , in a way.

Feeling undeserving of any kind of praise from the boy, Jean’s chest tightened in pain.

"If it happens, you’re coming with me," Jean said, with an almost convincing amount of confidence. _Almost_. “You’re stuck with me now, you know?”

"What kind of functioning tactician can’t read maps, Jean?" Armin asked.

Jean refused to answer the question

  


-

  


Armin eventually let Jean look beneath the bandages.

It wasn’t as momentous as Jean had expected it to be. There was no build up or fanfare, Armin merely sat him down and asked if he’d like to see.

Armin unravelled the linen, let most of it pool around his neck, while he carefully removed the pieces of gauze that clung to his skin. Jean sat on the bed next to Armin, transfixed and held frozen by something like fear and anticipation.

He still had eyes, Jean found he was alarmed to see. They never talked about it, about what it felt like, about what it was that Armin saw - whether it was nothing but black, or if he somehow pictured the world he lived in the way he must have once pictured the stories he told.

Jean gasped without intending to, but Armin didn’t once flinch.

Armin’s eyelids were red and swollen. It seemed as though he couldn’t open them, or perhaps he simply wouldn’t. But they were there, Jean could see the shape of them beneath his skin. He had a few distinct burns in the shape of gashes that ran over them, a grave reminder of how his sight had been taken from him to begin with.

“Is it hideous?” Armin asked softly.

If Jean thought his heart could break any more, it would have at those words. It’s here that he realized that Armin would never know what it looked like, would never know more than how the soft, delicate skin on top of the scars felt.

“No,” Jean replied. “Not at all.”

Armin shrank in on himself, a wilted flower, leaving Jean to curse himself for sounding so unsure.

“I think I might keep the bandages. The nurses say they can craft me a mask, but-”

Armin startled slightly as Jean’s hands cupped either side of his face. His breath was shallow and quick, his pulse racing. Jean gently followed the curve of Armin’s brows with the very tips of his fingers, traced the length of the scars with the pads of his thumbs.

“You don’t need anything,” Jean had said, this time with more conviction. He’d smiled at the thought of what he was about to say, though his heart sank when he realized Armin couldn’t see it. “You look like a warrior. You’re the bravest soldier I have ever known.”

Armin made a soft sound, and without any rhyme or reason, Jean leaned forward and kissed Armin’s face - the tips of his eyelashes, the center between his brows, the delicate flutter of his lids. He kissed Armin’s mouth, the thunder of his heart rendering him drunk on the touch and feel of Armin’s skin beneath his lips.

“Why are you kissing me?” Armin had questioned, sighing shakily as Jean continued to pepper kisses across his face.

“Because you’re beautiful,” he said, and meant it.

  


-

  


The war was almost over.

Erwin Smith had stepped down from his post the day after Lance Corporal Levi passed away in his bed. He hadn’t even died fighting, was taken by disease and human decay. A despondent death for Humanity’s Strongest.

Erwin’s eyes were hollow at the ceremony. Empty and far off, void of anything at all, even their color. It was the first time Jean had wondered if Levi was more to Erwin like what Armin was to himself - someone you need to keep you going, someone you feel privileged just for having known.

They affixed a badge to Jean’s coat - Erwin’s own, Jean was sure. The moment was bittersweet, to say the least. Armin sat out in the crowd with Eren when it happened, while Jean and Mikasa stood up on display for them all, the remainder of humanity’s hope.

Jean felt Armin’s absence in his side like he imagines Erwin felt the loss of his arm - wounded, incomplete. Armin could only know the ceremony was over when everyone cheered.

  


-

  


Armin had left the Corps years ago. He lived with Jean because Jean wouldn’t take no for an answer, and because Armin had quietly said he felt wrong leaving him, even if he knew it wouldn’t quite be the same.

He found his place in historical records, buried his nose in books he still couldn’t read, and still somehow managed to write pages to some. He had begun fashioning ones you can feel, had found ways to raise the lettering so that you could trace them with your fingers.

Jean would sometimes work late enough nights to come home and find Armin curled up in the chair by the fire, a book in his lap, and his bandages nowhere to be found.

“Part of me wants to beat myself up over the fact that I didn’t protect you better,” Jean would say, on the nights where Armin was soft and halfway to sleep, on the nights where he wouldn’t fight Jean on who was responsible for what had happened to him. “But I  _couldn’t_  have. Maybe Eren could have kept you safe - Mikasa definitely would have - but not me. You’ve saved me more times than I’ve saved you.”

His murmured regrets fell on the silence of the room, and Jean found himself wondering if Armin dreamed of Jean’s failures because of it.

  


-

  


It only figured that the largest battle was the penultimate one - the last real hurdle to free humanity and to promise hope for future generations, to finally feel safe enough to wander past the walls.

  


Eren Jaeger died on this day.

  


His death had been a promise, an act of revenge. He died in a winning battle, and Jean had never truly let himself break until that moment. It was reckless of him - out on the field, people still fighting behind him, the guttural groans of titans being wrangled to the ground, and all Jean could do was let it overtake him. Consumed by a harrowing mixture of loss and relief- they’d  _won_ , at the expense of so many lives.

Back within the walls, the reception of Eren’s passing was a mixed bag. Some people never truly understood Eren’s motives, his devotion to the cause. Some grieved him the way some once thought the cultists would grieve the walls, the way Armin’s stories told him history worshiped gods.

Jean was now the one to write the letters of condolences, to console the bereaved loved ones of his fallen soldiers. Most of these particular letters were tinged with hope, with beaming praise.

_“Your son has helped save humanity, your daughter is a hero.”_

Mikasa was standing next to his desk when he pulled out the parchment meant for the loved ones of Eren Jaeger. He looked up at her statuesque form and pleaded for her to command  _him_ , for once- to tell him what to do. Her face had not moved, her facade remained impenetrable, but the minute Jean had addressed that letter to Armin, she ripped it right from beneath his hands.

“You are a  _coward_  if you tell him this way,” Mikasa spat, and Jean said nothing. “I will tell him myself, in person.”

Jean chose to stay in his office that night and wait, didn’t dare go home until he knew Mikasa had done what she needed to do. His only companies into the early morning were a bottle of contraband and one of Armin’s books he’d been gifted a few years back.

When Mikasa returned, the sky was barely beginning to brighten from the morning sun. Jean’s chest felt hollow, a mortal wound that lay beneath the skin.

Seeing emotion on Mikasa’s face was somehow worse than picturing it on Armin’s. When she had returned, she left a receipt of delivery for the letters from the post, and her eyes were rimmed red and sore looking. Her voice when she spoke, though, showed no sign of emotion. And for this, Jean was thankful.

“Leave him tonight,” she said, “He’s finally asleep. He knows you’re busy.”

Jean nodded, the ache in his chest throbbing at the distance between himself and this man he’d attached himself to, but he could do this much for him now. He would never know the look on Armin’s face when he’d been told he lost his best friend, and selfishly he was grateful.

  


-

  


For all that Jean has spent hailing his fallen and wounded soldiers as heroes, civilians seemed only keen to latch the title onto himself and Mikasa. He was hailed as the savior of mankind, and Mikasa as his greatest weapon.

It is a shadow on what was once the life Jean knew, on the heroes that Jean himself had worshiped and admired. Humanity is in reform, the walls are being deconstructed. It is an effort that will push forward into the indefinite future, but they are safe- they now have new, more organic fears.

He visits Erwin in his home, for solidarity and also because Erwin Smith has been like a father to him- wise and jaded by the world, someone once in his shoes.

“Is it always this bittersweet to be praised?” Jean had asked him, a glass of Erwin’s finest whiskey held warm in his palm.

“You have everything to be proud of,” Erwin told him, avoiding the true question at hand, because Erwin had little left in him for reassurances. “You are the one who led humanity to victory, regardless of whether or not I held your hand to begin with.”

Jean had always assumed Erwin felt he’d failed the world after Levi had gone, that he couldn’t keep the greatest weapon of mankind safe from simple disease. It was a foreign concept to Jean, to give up on yourself after so much effort.

Losing his own best friend so early into the war hadn’t made him want to give up - if anything Marco’s death only made him more determined, made him fight  _harder,_  and with more conviction. Jean supposed then that perhaps it was the shock of it, the loss of many after so long only making you resigned to fate’s grip. Perhaps expecting death was something worse than having it sneak up behind you.

Jean had proved himself wrong over the years. Erwin was a shell of the man he used to be, and Jean still felt that life was worth living, every single day of it.

There was a disconnect there, between himself and Erwin. Something he was too afraid to name.

“My advice to you,” Erwin began, his scratchy beard aging him, turning to Jean with the tired of eyes of someone double his age, “-is to allow yourself to feel. Let yourself care, let it  _hurt_  you.”

Jean nodded, though he didn’t quite understand. He wasn’t sure he was capable of turning that kind of emotion on or off.

“Don’t ever get stuck in a situation where you’ve put all of yourself into one person,” Erwin had continued, voice slurring from the weight of the liquor on his tongue, “Because when you lose them, you might as well admit defeat yourself.”

Suddenly it made sense, at least to an extent.

Commander Erwin Smith had died the day that Levi had.

Jean, for the first time, felt blindingly thankful for Armin’s discharge from the Corps.

  


-

  


Jean wrapped his arms around Armin’s shoulders, stood behind him as they gazed out into the setting sun. They dug their toes in the sand, feet bare and trousers rolled up to their knees, and Jean pressed his nose into Armin’s ear to speak.

“Can you feel the sun, Armin? We’re facing it now.”

Armin nodded, his face serene, and said, “Describe it to me. Tell me what it looks like.”

Jean cast his gaze out to the ocean, to this symbol of hope that Armin had clutched to, all throughout his childhood.

“It’s… not as blue as I expected,” Jean began, and Armin chuckled softly at the confusion in his voice. “It’s actually very green, almost translucent. The edges of it are rough and made of white foam.”

Armin let his head fall backward, rested it on Jean’s shoulder. “More,” he requested.

“The waves are small, looks more like a pot simmering than some of the pictures in your books. There’s plants floating near the sand and lots of tiny rocks beneath them,” Jean sighed, clenched his eyes closed and tried to envision this the way Armin wanted it to be. “I’m sorry, Armin, I can’t-”

“It sounds beautiful,” Armin said, his smile bathed in the warm glow of the sun.

Jean couldn’t understand how his paltry description could make anything seem beautiful, but perhaps that wasn’t it. Perhaps Armin had long ago grown accustomed to seeing the world through other people’s eyes, especially Jean’s.

“Do you want to feel the water?” Jean asked him, nose pressed into the skin behind Armin’s ear, holding him close.

Armin grinned and nodded with all the enthusiasm of the little boy he once was.

Jean walked them forward, waddled his huddled form around Armin’s, laughed loud and full of air when Armin shrieked at how cold it was against his toes. Armin began laughing, resisting Jean’s grip, squirming in his arms. Jean only held him closer, caught in this coil of emotion that both started with the boy he’d known and ended somewhere around the men they both became.

When they fell to the sand, Armin nestled in Jean’s lap, panting to catch his breath, a fresh wave of grief overcame Jean, and he buried his face into Armin’s neck, hid from the world he suddenly felt he didn’t have a right to see.

“Why are you crying?” Armin asked softly, and Jean allowed himself a moment to contort, to let his heart ache and throb in a pained silence, before composing himself enough to speak.

“We came all this way, we got  _so far_  and we  _survived_ , and you can’t even see it,” Jean said, his voice thick with emotion.

“Seeing isn’t the only part of living,” Armin said. Jean loosened his grip, but still held Armin close, breathed in the familiar scent of his skin. “Besides, I can smell it.”

“What does it smell like?” Jean whispered.

“Like steam and wet salt,” Armin said, breathing deep.

Jean found himself grinning against Armin’s neck, his eyes full of unshed tears and his arms trembling. “That’s a terrible description,” he said mildly.

“It doesn’t matter. It could smell like dirt and I’d be happy enough to be alive to smell it.”

Jean often thought of what it meant to be a strong fighter. There were people like Mikasa and Levi, fuelled by skill and duty; people like Eren, fueled by anger and impulse. And there were people like Armin, people that were fueled by love.

“Good,” Jean said, and then pressed a gentle kiss to the nape of Armin’s neck. “Let’s go home now.” 

And maybe seeing it never truly mattered, maybe all Armin needed was to know it was there.


End file.
